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SAMUEL PROCTOR ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM at
the University of Florida

Interviewee: David M. Chalmers
June 2, 1992
UF 206

L: This is an interview with Dr. David M. Chalmers, distinguished service
professor of history at the University of Florida. We are talking in Dr.
Chalmers's office in Turlington Hall on the University of Florida campus.
Today is June 2, 1992, and my name is Stuart Landers.

I would like to start out by asking you some biographical questions. When
and where were you born?

C: [I was born in] Washington, DC, May 16, 1927.

L: Who were your parents, or who are your parents, if they are still alive?

C: Were. Henry and Sally Chalmers.

L: What did your father do for a living?

C: He was an economist [with a] specialization in international trade and tariffs with the
Department of Commerce.

L: So he worked for the government.

C: Yes.

L: Did your mother work at all?

C: Yes, she did. She was an editorial assistant, primarily for Andre Vison, who was
roving editor for Reader's Digest.

L: Very interesting. So I take it that both of your parents were very well educated.

C: My father had a doctorate, a Ph.D., in economics. He received it the year I was
born from the Brookings Institute, which was then the graduate school. [He was a]
classmate of Max Lerner. He kept the fact that he had a Ph.D. quiet because it
would have been a hindrance to his advancement in government to have had an
advanced education at that time. My mother did not have a college education.

L: OK. What inspired you to become a historian?

C: I think a fascination with history and events. It [my reason] is not complex.

-1-

L: And you earned your undergraduate degree at Swarthmore College?

C: Yes.

L: I understand that that is a Quaker institution.

C: Well, it is not formally a church institution, but it is heavily influenced [by Quaker
thought]. It is a Quaker institution in the essential sense of the word.

L: And you earned your Ph.D. at the University of Rochester.

C: Yes.

L: You received that in 1955. When did you become active in civil rights activities?

C: At the University of Florida, probably 1963.

L: When did you come to the University of Florida?

C: 1955.

L: As a visiting instructor?

C: As an interim instructor.

L: I understand you were married in 1958.

C: Yes.

L: And [you] lived in Melrose.

C: Yes.

L: When did you become involved with an organization called the Human Relations
Council [HRC]?

C: Oh, I guess I was involved before 1963. I think probably [it was] 1957 or 1958 when
I went to its meetings. I did not become more heavily involved until after I was
married. This was the one interracial organization within the community.

L: How large of a group was it?

C: Oh, I do not know. At the annual dinner there might have been as many as 100
people.

-2-

L: Local?

C: Local. This was set up by the Southern Regional Council, of which, incidentally, [my
wife] Jean is now a vice-president. They had organized interracial groups
throughout the South. The annual dinner would be at one of the black churches, so
there would be as many as 100 people turn out. Otherwise, they had meetings to
discuss interracial problems within the community.

The only thing I remember spontaneously--I have not given any thought to this or
any preparation for talking with you now--was our asking the leaders of the black
community what they wanted in Gainesville, and they said what they would like was
someplace where their people visiting Gainesville could stay. There was no motel,
no place for black people to stay overnight. [There was] no commercial place in
Gainesville. Of course, there was no mortgage money available for anything such
as this.
At that time, remember, the city of Gainesville did not supply water to anyone who
did not buy electricity. Gainesville was a case of gas-and-water socialism. The city
owned its electrical plant, and this was very useful because it could charge high
rates for electricity and therefore keep the taxes low on land in and around
Gainesville. This was very advantageous for the large landowners. So the city
would not supply water where it did not supply electricity. Most of, or a large portion
of, black Gainesville did not have electricity, so the city would not supply them water.
It did run a pipe down into southeast Gainesville with a tap at the end of it, so
African-American citizens--then we would say Negro, and I think it is important
historically to use the terms that were relevant at that time--would bring their bottles
and containers and get water from the tap.

L: Aside from assessing the desires and wants of the black community, what other
activities did the Human Relations Council engage in?

C: I do not know of other ones. I think mainly it was a case of people meeting each
other on a one-to-one basis.

L: Do you recall the names of any of the leaders, any of the people central to that
organization?

C: No, I do not. I was just an attender, and was not really involved in it. I remember
one meeting--this was before Jean and I were married, so this was before 1958--in
which at the annual dinner the guest speaker was a distinguished department
chairman from the University who got up there at Mount Carmel [Baptist Church,
where the dinner was being held] and talked himself into segregation, so by the end
of his talk he had arrived at the conclusion that people should not be required to
associate with each other in any way unless they actually wanted to do so. I thought
that was really quite remarkable.

-3-

L: So he argued himself into ...

C: [He] argued himself into segregation.

L: Do you remember who that was?

C: Yes, but I do not think I am going to identify him for you.

L: OK. So how long did you attend [HRC] meetings?

C: Oh, I do not know. On and off. It had no particularly large meaning or role in my
life.

L: To back up just a little bit, when you first came to Gainesville, what was your initial
reaction to the racial situation? Do you recall that?

C: No, I do not. I did not have much of a reaction at all. I guess basically I accepted
the way things were. I thought it was wrong. I thought that there should be
integration and [that] people should be treated and live on a basis of equality and
interact with each other, but I had no particular thought that it was going to be
changing. I came here just one year after Brown v. Topeka. I remember growing up
in Washington the excitement that was felt at the changes that were beginning to
take place. The Thompson's restaurant case, when the courts struck down
segregation in local restaurants in Washington, DC, which is my hometown, [is one
example of the shifting winds]. Things were beginning to take place, but there was
no sense that vast changes were likely.

L: I understand that you were also involved to some extent with the local Quakers in
Gainesville.

C: Yes. I had gone to a Quaker college, and so I began attending the Quaker meeting
in Gainesville.

L: How large of a group was that?

C: Oh, about thirty people altogether. Let me see. It was the Gainesville yearly
meeting. A substantial number of members of the history department attended or
were members of the Friends meeting: Rembert Patrick and his wife, Don Worcester
and his wife, John and Enid Mahon. (I am not sure if John attended.) [And there
were] others.

L: I assume [that] in the late 1950s and early 1960s this was an all-white organization.

-4-

C: It still is. Well, no, not absolutely. It is not all-white by choice. If you think of how
dull and how uninteresting and unmoving most of white religion is, anyway,
particularly compared with the excitement of the black churches, then multiply this
100 times and you have the Quakers. Except in times of racial or foreign policy
crisis. Then the meetings become quite interesting. But I think any black person
brought up in the evangelical traditions of the black churches and in the musical
traditions of black churches would find the Quakers the most forbidding of all the
religions.

L: Did the Gainesville Quakers take an official position on the race issue in the early
1960s? Did they make active moves as an organization toward racial equality?

C: I do not know that they ever formally took a local position. The Quakers were
opposed to slavery and believe in the equality of all individuals. This is a very
deeply held belief among the Quakers. There is no real organizational structure for
taking stands. The Gainesville meeting was always involved in interracial activity, so
it was not a case of the meeting responding to conditions by expressing itself. It has
always expressed itself.

L: OK. I have gone through the speech that you gave at Greater Bethel A.M.E. Church
[on] January 20, 1991.

C: The talk.

L: The talk. I would like to ask you some specific questions that I have derived from it,
if I could.

L: First of all, you mentioned the University of Florida dean of students, Lester Hale.
He sounds like someone who would be best described as a segregationist. Can you
give me some more information about him, his activities, his position? Do you recall
anything?

C: [I recall] nothing in particular that would be useful for this. He was a segregationist.
I thought that he was inadequate as a dean of men, and certainly as an inspirational
or moral leader for the students. When the Student Group for Equal Rights was
formed in 1963, he attempted to obstruct its activity if he possibly could. He was
involved in the later monitoring of the off-campus activities of faculty who were
working for civil rights. He testified at the hearings on Marshall Jones [assistant
professor of psychiatry and psychology and political activist].

I remember the time of the anti-Vietnam demonstrations--this would be in the spring
of 1972--when the students camped out in the street in front of the administration

-5-

building. Paul Doughty, the new chair of the anthropology department, and I were
out there with the students watching Michael Gannon getting hosed down by the fire
department. We had an idea for something that might be done, and so we went
around to the back of the administration building, of Tigert Hall. The building was
locked, and there were guards defending the building against anyone who wanted to
gain entry. We identified ourselves and went up to talk to Dean Hale, then the vice-
president. So there were students--hundreds of them--in the streets out in front of
the administration building, [as well as] police, firemen, everything. He [Dean Hale]
was sitting in his office facing the other direction, back towards the campus, his desk
completely clear, his feet up on the desk, listening to music.

L: He was not peering through the blinds like George Wallace in Montgomery,
Alabama?

C: He was not peering through the blinds, he was not up talking with the president, or
anything else. [He was] just sitting there restfully.

L: He could not have cared less. All right. Aside from Dean Hale, you mentioned
Professor [of Social Sciences] Paul Hanna and his faculty resolution in support of
integration and also that he probably had some promotional problems later in his
career because of that.

C: Well, he was a full professor, [and] this may well have prevented him from
succeeding Bill Carlton as chair of the C-1, the American Institutions program [of the
University College]. He was, in effect, the administrator of the program. He was the
number-two person in the department. He put a resolution before the AAUP
[American Association of University Professors] that the University ought to
integrate, that it was time. There was a very unfavorable reaction. But I cannot
describe that for you. I was only an interim instructor, and we did not know much
about anything.

L: Do you remember about what year that was?

C: I think it was in 1956 that he put the resolution [before the AAUP].

L: That early?

C: Yes. By many it [the AAUP] was considered to be quite radical at that time. Later
on, when I was on the board of the local, we recommended that the University of
Florida be placed on the AAUP national black list, to be censored by the
organization, which we did.

L: It did censure the University?

-6-

C: Yes. This is over First Amendment freedoms and anti-Communist loyalty oaths. It
[the AAUP] was considered to be a very radical organization.

L: Is it still around?

C: I really do not think it is around on this campus. It was supplanted by the union,
UFF, the University of Florida Faculties. For a while many of us were in both
organizations. It exists. It is a useful organization. But it tended to be used here as
a conservative resistance of the unionization of faculty, although it itself attempted
unionization. Those people opposed to the union tended to become active in the
AAUP, and I am afraid unfortunately [that] this discredited it. It is very useful
nationally for setting standards. Now, it will engage in academic freedom fights. It
publishes useful information on faculty salaries and such.

L: Turning to the actual beginnings of integration on the campus, following the
culmination of Virgil Hawkins's case and according to Judge Dozier DeVane's order
in 1958, two black students [George Stark and George Allen] entered the law school
that year. In 1959 Daphne Duval [a Gainesville schoolteacher] began taking night
classes.

C: Yes.

L: Then in 1962 seven black students became undergraduates. How did the campus
and the community react to that?

C: [There was] no reaction at all. In 1956 or 1957 the [Board of] Control still opposed
the integration of the [universities in the] state of Florida. They conducted a poll,
and they polled high school students, the parents of high school students, college
students, and the parents of college students about their reaction to integration. The
parents of both groups and the high school students, if I remember it correctly, were
opposed to integration. The University of Florida students really were not much
concerned one way or another. I have an impression that they may have voted in
favor of it. The Board of Control was attempting to use this [poll] as an argument
against integration, maintaining it would be damaging to the University if it was
integrated.

L: But it only polled white parents and white students.

C: Oh, yes.

L: Was there any violence, any overt acts against these students?

C: No. As far as I know (I cannot say no) [there were] none.

L: They were accepted? Ignored?

-7-

C: [There was a] mixture of all. I think they acted and lived the fairly normal life on
campus. You might ask Daphne Duval. The people I mentioned, the names that
you have--I checked up on names and dates and such--were primarily members of
the leading black churches and of the black upper class in Gainesville.

L: As I understand it, the two leading black churches were Mount Carmel Baptist, with
Reverend Thomas Wright, and the Greater Bethel African Methodist Episcopal.
During this time, who was the pastor or religious leader of Greater Bethel?

C: I cannot tell you for Greater Bethel. The only contacts I had were with Mount
Carmel and Tom Wright, who had been minister in St. Augustine and then came
over to Gainesville.

L: Do you recall when he came to Gainesville? I can find that out elsewhere [if you
cannot].

C: It would be better to do that. [It was in the] early 1960s, I believe.

L: I know that he was a leader of the NAACP Youth Council activities when the
community moved into the picketing/protest phase. Would you say that he conforms
to the "outsider-becomes-leader" pattern?

C: No, not an outsider. [He was] very much an insider. This is one of the two, as you
have indicated, most prestigious churches and church communities in Gainesville,
so he was very much not the outsider.

L: I meant outsider in terms of being a recent arrival in Gainesville, like [Martin Luther]
King [Jr.] was in Montgomery [Alabama] and then was elevated to leadership.

C: No, I do not think this is comparable to King's case. From what we know of King's
case, he was picked because he was not yet involved in any of the intermural
conflicts, so he was a compromise candidate. I think at this time that Reverend
Wright had a great deal of prestige on his own. There was a black minister who was
head of the NAACP--it lodges in my memory that his name was Alexander--and
everyone was really quite contemptuous of him, saying that he was an Uncle Tom,
that under his leadership the NAACP did not attempt to create any pressure or
cause any problems.

L: And I understand it was the youth council under Reverend Wright that was the most
active part of the NAACP.

C: Yes, it was.

-8-

There was something else interesting that happened in Gainesville. I do not know if
you have it elsewhere in your notes or if it is absolutely irrelevant. There was a
group of citizens--I do not know how they were organized--that put pressure on the
city of Gainesville to pass these code restrictions that would require indoor
plumbing. A good portion of the black community--almost all of it--lived in rented
houses and did not have any kind of indoor facilities or any kind of running water.
So a group headed by Nina Starr, who was the wife of a very distinguished
professor in the English department [Nathan C. Starr], an Arthurian authority,
testified [before and] pressed the city commission. Nina had arranged a slide show
of the conditions in the black ghetto in Gainesville. She showed slides of the terrible
condition of housing and health facilities without indicating [who owned the property].
What she had done was she and the women who were working with her--I do not
know what kind of structure they had--showed slides of rental property owned by
members of the city commission. So for the best part of an hour they showed slides
of the substandard and nonstandard housing. Nothing was ever said as to whose
property it was, but everybody knew. Eventually the ordinance was passed, pressed
through by the city manager, which cost him his job, basically.

L: His name was ...

C: I cannot tell you. You are going to have to go to someone else for Gainesville
information. By and large, young instructors are not involved in such things. Their
attention just is elsewhere.

L: You were writing the [Ku Klux] Klan book [Hooded Americanism: the First Century of
the Ku Klux Klan, 1865-1965] at the time.

C: Was I? No, not yet.

L: Do you remember the year of the showing [of the slides]?

C: No. Nina Starr comes down and spends the winters in Gainesville. [She] stays
either at the Atrium or the Village--probably the Atrium. She could tell you about
this. [She is a] wonderful woman. Nathan Starr was her husband's name.

In 1960 she helped organize the election campaign for Chester Bowles for president
of the United States.

Basically, I would not have picked me as the person to interview for Gainesville
conditions at the turn of the 1960s.

L: Well, whatever you know would be helpful, [even if it is nothing more than to] show
me other places I need to go. Do you recall anything about Mayor Byron Winn's
biracial council?

-9-

C: Yes, I do, and I think [it would be appropriate to say] something of the antecedents
to this. That is, Byron Winn was the only person on the city commission who was
willing to accept integration. [As mayor, Winn appointed eight whites and four
blacks to a biracial council and charged them to call upon restaurants and theaters
to desegregate. Ed.] He was the one nonconservative member. (It is hard to
define conservative or nonconservative. I would not say that he was a liberal.) But
by and large the city and county commissions were dominated by builders and large
real estate interests and such. This group was organized in the community, the
Civic Action Association (the CAA), and the major force in this--this was very
important, I think, in Gainesville--was John Degrove, who was a political scientist
involved in state government water policies. Later he went down [to become] vice-
president of the Florida Atlantic University. This had a major role. He has been a
cabinet secretary within various Democratic governments in Tallahassee.

We [my wife Jean and I] helped organize. I was not an organizer; I just went door to
door campaigning (this must have been in 1959 or 1960) for two more open
candidates for city commission. These were Ed Turlington and Al Sutherlin. Both of
them were elected. We managed to elect a majority to the city commission. Byron
Winn became mayor, which made it possible for the city commission to take at least
mild steps.

I cannot tell you [anything else] about the biracial council. I guess when Jean was
mayor, one of the anniversaries was the twentieth anniversary, and she got the city
to invite all the members back again to Gainesville.

L: That would probably be in the Gainesville Sun.

C: Yes; I remember pictures of it. But ask her about it, and she can tell you.

L: [This was] 1984 and 1985.

C: There are people, of course, to whom you need to talk. Most of them are watching
us from up above: G. M. Davis, a contractor who was a city and county
commissioner; Manning Dauer; Ruth McQuown, particularly; and "Tiny" Talbot, who
was the superintendent of elections. The people who are here now still to whom you
really ought to talk [include] Sid Martin and two members of the school board who
helped to ease the Gainesville school system into integration. These are Bill
Enneking, who was a professor emeritus of surgery at the University and lives in
Melrose (he is at Shands every day), and Ben Samuels, who is a dentist. These
were quiet, I suppose, unsung heroes of the integration of Gainesville. They did as
much as they thought they could do. Both were on the school board.

L: I understand that there was a gentleman named Ted Simmonds on the school board
who was the leading segregationist at the time.

-10-

C: I just remember the name. I do not remember anything about him.

L: OK. Let us talk about the Student Group for Equal Rights for a couple of minutes. I
understand that Austin Creel, who was a professor in the religion department and
Marshall Jones, who was in the College of Medicine [were both faculty advisors for
that group].

C: Yes. He [Jones] was a research professor. I do not know what rank he held. He
was a geneticist and a Ph.D., rather than an M.D. Brilliant person.

L: What other faculty members do you recall being active in the student group?

C: Well, the most important person was Marshall Jones. The most visible person was
Ed Richer, who was an assistant professor or instructor, probably, in humanities.
Two students were organizing it: Pincus Gross and Jerry Essic. These were the
people, I think, who first helped organize the Student Group for Equal Rights. Then,
of course, you will want [to talk to UF students] Dan Harmeling and Julian Brown.

L: Were Gross and Essic white students?

C: Yes. Pincus has come back into the community. I think he is in Jacksonville. Dan
Harmeling teaches in Levy County and lives in Gainesville.

L: And Harmeling was also arrested in St. Augustine.

C: Yes. [Four UF faculty and four students, including Dan Harmeling and Julian Brown,
went to jail with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during a civil rights campaign in St.
Augustine in the spring of 1964. Ed.]

L: So the Student Group for Equal Rights was the organization that began the picketing
and the actual street protests in Gainesville in the fall of 1963. I also understand
that the NAACP Youth Council participated in that.

C: Yes.

L: Was there much violent conflict associated with pickets at the College Inn or the
Humpty Dumpty restaurant or places like that?

C: No, [there was] not much violent conflict at all. I think Pat Frank got hit and arrested
in front of the Humpty Dumpty, which was on NW 13th Street somewhere around
3rd [Avenue]. His father was famous because he had written a book about what the
world would be like, what America would be like, after the first nuclear bomb was
dropped.

L: Alas, Babylon?

-11 -

C: Alas, Babylon. Perry Frank, his sister, was probably involved in this as well. I am in
touch with Perry. She is teaching in Washington, DC, now. I do not know that there
was any violence there. There is violence in racial relations in the community, but
[there was none that I recall during any of the protest rallies].

L: Did counter-protestors or counter-demonstrators ever assemble in large numbers?
Was there ever a screaming, jeering white mob?

C: Not as far as I know, with the exception of the first time there was an attempt to
integrate the Florida Theater, which became the Great Southern Musical Hall. What
on earth is it now?

L: It is the Florida Theater now. It is divided up into bars and dance clubs.

C: That was the famous episode. I do not think that much happened. It might have.
This got everyone alarmed. It was an interesting thing. I remember we were
picketing it. What we did with picketing was we would have a faculty member and a
group of students. There was a token [amount] of responsibility for the faculty
member to act as spokesman. I do not think the students would feel as acceptable
[to that practice] nowadays, although they like [to have] the faculty involved.

I had gone to one of the sorority/faculty dinners and then had to excuse myself
because it was my time to go down with my picket group in front of the Florida
Theater. While we were there one of the women who had invited me to her sorority
dinner came by with her boyfriend to go to the Florida Theater. She said, "Professor
Chalmers, what are you doing here?" I explained to her the nature of the picket, and
she said, "I think you are absolutely right." Then they bought their ticket and went in.
I thought the Florida students just did not understand the nature of picketing and
protest in those days.

I thought the strongest feeling that parents at least had was the anti-union feeling,
[which was] very, very strong in Florida. The parents of our students would rather
have them go to school with Stokeley Carmichael [civil rights leader] than Walter
Reuther [American labor leader] any day of the week. The Florida anti-union feeling
was really very strong. There were reasons for it. Some of the unions were--I was
going to say the least desirable; I did not want to say that--the least respectable
portions of the labor movement in Florida.

L: You mentioned a sorority woman's activities. Did any of the sororities or fraternities
take an active part in any of this?

C: Not as far as I know. Now, that is not a full statement. There may well have been. I
do not think so. Now, individuals within sororities or fraternities might have.

-12-

L: Was there an identifiable leader of Gainesville's segregationists?

C: I do not think so. The most outspoken person for segregation was Sinclair Eaton.

L: Can you tell me a little about him?

C: He owned a store or business in town that [specialized in] house cleaning supplies;
[it was] a supply business. When I was teaching a course on the vigilante tradition
in America, I asked him to come to my class and talk about the white citizens
council. He wrote back to me and said: "There is not a white citizens council. If
there were, I would have belonged to it. There is not one here." I took his word for
that.

L: Do you still have that letter?
C: Oh, I do not think so. I may. The Council for Human Relations for a while was
meeting in the police station in one of their meeting rooms on the grounds that it was
probably the safest place to meet. He was concerned, I remember, that we might
have been using a public loudspeaker [and a] public recording machine. The
Council on Human Relations used to have its annual picnic at a little church off in
west Gainesville at the end of a sandy road [Spring Hill Baptist Church]. We always
said, "What a safe place because the Klan can never find us here." We had no idea
that the Klan was looking for us. Now, of course, 23rd Avenue zips by where there
used to be a little sandy road, and the church is right at the edge of 23rd Avenue.

L: You said that there was no organized white citizens council. What about the Ku
Klux Klan in Alachua County?

C: I do not think so. The closest Klan meeting that I attended was in Lake Butler.
There had been the Ku Klux Klan [here] in the 1920s. I am sure there were
Klansmen here, but I never really heard with any degree of credibility that there was
a Klan operating in Gainesville. I heard rumors. I asked the sheriffs from time to
time, but they would never really tell me or talk to me. If there were one, the sheriff
would know. [There were no Klansmen here in the 1960s.]

L: Do you recall any Klansmen or white citizens council types coming in from, say,
Jacksonville or St. Augustine, parading or anything like that?

C: No.

L: Do you recall any other outspoken segregationist types in Gainesville?

C: No, I do not. You did not really have to be outspoken. Segregation was accepted--
and still is among many of the (I would assume) leaders in the business community.
I have been at social gatherings and listened to people talk. I would not say
segregation; prejudice is there. It always surprises me who is going to talk about

-13-

"the niggers" and that sort of thing. I keep thinking that that is way past, at least
among the elites, but it is not necessarily so.

L: In terms of the Gainesville business community, in the early 1960s the commercial
center was still downtown. Is that correct?

C: There was not an 1-75 in Florida!

L: So the decay [of the downtown area] had not really begun.

C: Yes. The business world was locally owned. There was Sears and Belk-Lindsey
and Piggly-Wiggly and some of the chain stores and the gasoline stations, but
Gainesville had a locally owned radio station, a locally owned newspaper. Again
and again we would hear stories--that is often all that a University teacher knows--
that people attempting to come from outside and set up businesses along [U.S.
Highway] 441, which was the only big route south, would have trouble. They could
not get financing. The banks in town would not help them, or if they needed change
[they could not get it], or repairmen would not go out and repair the refrigerators and
such. The local business community controlled the community and the local
resources, and they did not want to share with anyone, even to share a larger
amount of money. So it was not a growth-oriented society.

L: [So local business was] very controlled; [Gainesville was] very much a "good-old-
boy"-type business community.

C: But you see, the things I keep saying to you are [things that were reported to the
community as] "it is reported" or "we have heard." That is not very much in the way
of evidence.

L: [So those are] things to investigate elsewhere. With the exception of the Florida
Theater and the owner of the College Inn ... Who was the owner of the College
Inn?

C: I have forgotten his name.

L: Would you agree that, for the most part, the rest of the Gainesville businesses and
merchants desegregated without too much resistance?

C: I assume so, except for some of the restaurants, particularly the "Gold Coast" area.
That is the strip of eating places across the street from the University.

L: Where the College Inn was?

C: Where the College Inn was, which is now the Purple Porpoise [at 1728 W. University
Avenue].

-14-

L: So that whole complex was called the "Gold Coast?"

C: Yes, taking its name from the portion of Miami Beach known as the Gold Coast.

L: During the time that the picketing was occurring in front of the Florida Theater and
these Gold Coast establishments, you remarked in your speech that a dean of one
of the colleges and faculty members from one specific unmentioned college were
known to disregard your picket and cross the line. Would you care to identify any of
those folks? I am curious as to what the college was.

C: Business administration. [Also Linton Grinter, dean of the Graduate School.] I
remember that I had a student in one of my survey classes from Denmark. His
father, he said, was one of the curators of the Copenhagen Zoo, and he always
talked about how reactionary the University of Florida students were, that they
lacked any kind of social consciousness or any social concern. Then he crossed my
picket line, and I was just astounded by this! I waited for him to say something to
me afterwards. He did not, so one day after class--we talked a lot; he was a track
and field person (he threw the javelin)--he said he had only three dollars a day to
spend on food, which was a considerable amount at that time, and he owed it to
himself to get the best amount for his money. That place was the College Inn. I
expected him at least to change his attitude about foreign students. But no. He
went right on talking about how they lacked any social consciousness and how
prejudiced they were. I thought that was interesting.

I usually had to put the picket in front of the College Inn at noon on Sunday for I
guess an hour or two-hour period, from 11:00 to 1:00. I volunteered because other
people likely to do this would be more likely [to be] in church than I was. So we
used to get a big flood at 12:00 from St. Augustine [Church and Catholic Student
Center] next door. All the people who were going to be taking communion had
fasted before. Then they would have communion and bring Jesus in, and they
would have segregated Sunday lunch at the College Inn. I must say that at the
same time St. Augustine allowed the Student Group for Equal Rights to organize
and hold its picket or assembly on the grounds of the church as well.

[Although] you have not mentioned [it], I assume you have looked into the campus
ministers' association, the Gainesville Ministerial Association.

L: Yes, that is on the list here. Can you tell me some things about that?

C: The important campus ministers were Father [Michael] Gannon and John Talbird at
the Chapel of the Incarnation. He now has a pastorate in Chattanooga, up on
Lookout Mountain. Particularly involved was John Talmage at the Presbyterian
Student Center.

-15-

L: What form did their involvement take? Did they picket?

C: I do not think they picketed. They made statements. They endorsed. Particularly
the Presbyterian Student Center was a meeting place for just about everything that
went on during the 1960s. I thought that was interesting because the first thing I
remember racially at the University of Florida was that there was a Latin American
conference on campus. We had a major Latin American program then. One of the
people who was going to attend the conference--it was a Caribbean conference--
was black, and that caused a great deal of concern in Gainesville: Where is that
person going to stay? Whoever was head or pastor of the Presbyterian Student
Center arranged [for lodging for him at the center]; he said, "He can stay here." This
created displeasure downtown, and the word came from First Presbyterian [Church]
that he was not going to stay at the Presbyterian Student Center.

The minister who was most admired and revered, the most influential person in the
city of Gainesville, was Preacher [Ulysses S.] Gordon at First Presbyterian, and all
of the University and much of the community elites belonged to First Presbyterian.
Just about all of the University upper administrators were Presbyterians. It was not
that we set out to hire Presbyterians. We set out to hire moral men, and they turned
out to be Presbyterian.

We did have one Baptist vice-president, and the stories were that he played the
piano and played things other than hymns, that the glass of liquid on the piano was
not absolutely transparent. So we dealt him off to be president of Auburn [University
in Auburn, Alabama] and replaced him with a Presbyterian. But Preacher Gordon
was not a help to race relations in Gainesville.

L: It sounds like the Presbyterian Church was rather conservative. Were any of the
other white churches involved?

C: I just do not know. The Gainesville Ministerial Association in the fall of 1963 opened
its membership to black ministers, and they called for an end to segregation.

L: Did they do anything [else]?

C: I cannot tell you anything more than that. But that was an important action. [It was
in] the fall of 1963, which was when the Student Group for Equal Rights and
Gainesville Women for Equal Rights [GWER] organized their activities.

L: How long did the picketing and things like that last?

C: I think it may have lasted through the whole fall term.
L: Much into 1964?

-16-

C: My impression is no. I cannot remember when it took up again after the Christmas
vacation. I just do not remember its doing so. Have you read about them at all yet?
Have you worked on their picketing?

L: Just what I have from your speech.

C: One interesting thing they decided to do was to find new ways to communicate and
present the message. They decided that they would have an eat-in at the College
Inn. There were two places: the College Inn, and then there was another one. (I
guess it may have been called the Gold Coast, a smaller sandwich shop, the second
store down from it.) So they encouraged everyone on that day to eat at the College
Inn, and there was a long line that went down the street and around the corner on
17th [Street] of people waiting to eat.

L: The reverse picketers?

C: The reverse picketers. I thought that was clever. The dean of students and the
associate dean of students did attempt to end the picketing and to obstruct the
Student Group for Equal Rights.

L: What sorts of actions did they take toward that end?

C: Surveillance. I have some material here. I cannot remember what it was, [the]
attempted disciplinary action against students and [who was] involved in it.

L: Harassment-type things. Aside from the eat-in, what other novel forms of protest
[did students or other groups do]?

C: I do not remember.

L: That was the main one.

C: That is the one that stands out in my memory. The owner of the College Inn
denounced the students. Of course, everything going on was Communist, and they
got the Johns Committee to send down an investigator. [In the late 1950s Florida
Senator Charley E. Johns chaired a special committee to investigate the NAACP
and communists. Their 1963 report raked UF professors for teaching ideas contrary
to orthodox religious principles, textbooks for containing salacious material, and
homosexuality. Ed.] They took pictures of people that were on the picket line.

L: Yes. Did anything else ever come of that?

C: Perhaps Dan Harmeling can tell you more about that.

-17-

L: OK. What sort of positions were the Gainesville police force and the Alachua
County sheriffs office taking?

C: I cannot tell you. I do not know.

L: OK.

C: You will want to talk to Dan Harmeling, [and] you will want to talk to Marshall Jones
and to [his wife] Beverly Jones.

L: Are they both in town?

C: No. Marshall is the department chair at the Pennsylvania State Medical School at
Hershey.

L: And he is still married to Beverly, and she is ...

C: ... still married to him.

L: But they are both in Pennsylvania?

C: Yes. Now, have you seen Marshall Jones's account?

L: No, I have not.

C: Is that part of your files, your archives?

L: It could be in there. I have not found it yet.

C: I have a copy of it which I can let you read. I cannot let you copy it because when
Marshall sent it to me long ago he asked that it not be copied. That was a long time
ago, and he may feel differently about it now. I would think so.

L: OK. That would be very helpful.

C: If you want to read it and agree not to copy it except with his permission, [I will gladly
lend it to you].

L: Certainly. Is that it?

C: Yes.

L: It is a very large document. Would you happen to have a current address for him?

C: Not other than the medical school. I should have his address, but I do not.

-18-

L: Knowing where he works, I could probably track him down.

C: He tells me that he finds himself in the ironic position of hiring and firing young
teachers.

L: Which he never thought he would be doing in 1963 or 1964.

C: Most tenure cases deal with people who are probably fairly marginal, those cases
where there is a question of academic freedom involved. The case of Ed Richer
came up. I thought Ed Richer, who was a wonderful talker, was not a competent
teacher, and I would not have voted for him for tenure, although he was a friend.
But the University set out to dismiss him because they did not like his political free
speech activities. That is the kind of stupid thing that universities do.

Now, in the case of Ken McGill, who I thought was very able, if I had been in his
department I would not have voted for his tenure. But his department did, and his
college [did]. I think the University should have supported him. In the case of
Marshall Jones, there was no question. Here was a person of outstanding ability
who performed his job exceptionally well. Usually we do not have a chance to rally
around or fight a case for a person whose abilities are so clear.

L: Was he turned down for tenure?

C: He was turned down for tenure by the president.

L: Because of his civil rights activities?

C: Yes, civil rights and antiwar.

L: So this was later on in the 1960s, then.

C: It was later on in the 1960s. [Jones was assistant professor of psychiatry and
psychology from 1962-1968. Ed.]

L: That is very interesting.

C: You get an idea of how the University operated and what its attitudes were when
you read the University's prefer to the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee of
the [Faculty] Senate.

L: Did you have any problems of this nature when you were up for tenure?

C: No. It just came in the mail one day. I did not really even know what tenure was.
The University obviously had lower standards in those days. We do a much more

-19-

[thorough] job now. When I went to St. Augustine [to participate in the civil rights
demonstrations] my only concern was that if I missed classes I would be liable for
dismissal.

L: For being absent from your duties as a professor.

C: So what happened [was] we [those of us professors who participated in the
demonstrations] arranged [for someone to take our classes]. This was over the
Fourth of July, was it not? It was a period over Saturday, Sunday, Monday, so it
must have been the Fourth of July. Jean was going to bail me out in time to get
back to my classes on Tuesday.

L: And you did make it. You said that you were jailed with three other University of
Florida faculty members.

C: No, one other University of Florida faculty member. It was Brian McNab, who later
became chair of the zoology department. He is in New Guinea at the moment, so
that will be an interesting interview if you go to see him. There was the chaplain of
Boston College visiting at that particular moment. Other University of Florida faculty
had been in St. Augustine prior to that.

These are some of the notes that I took, the things I put together to make my talk a
year ago. Marshall Jones and Ed Richer and Austin Creel and David Sheehan (I do
not remember David Sheehan's department) [Sheehan was an instructor of English.
Ed.] had been arrested in Ocala. I think June Littler [was] also; there were several
others. What they did [in Ocala] was to take all of the white people out of the picket
line around the city hall and arrest them, [but] not the black people.

L: Why take just the whites out and arrest them? What purpose did that serve?

C: I do not quite know. Probably to single out the worst miscreants. Obviously black
people are black people, but the white people getting involved were obviously the
leaders and the troublemakers.

L: And probably commies, too; that was the usual view, right?

Tell me some more about your St. Augustine experience. Was it a spur-of-the-
moment decision to go and participate in the activities in St. Augustine? Was it an
organized trip?

C: Oh, something of the latter. There is nothing particularly notable about it. As I
remember it, and I checked with Dan Harmeling, two students--there is a long
process, and you have probably read David Colburn's book [Racial Change and
Community Crisis: St. Augustine, Florida, 1877-1980]--went to jail in St. Augustine,
Dana Swan and I think Dan Harmeling.

-20-

L: And Julian Brown.

C: Oh, Julian Brown. Dana Swan and Julian Brown.

L: Swan, Brown, and Harmeling are all white, correct?

C: Yes.

I am in touch with Dana Swan, who has worked for SCLC [Southern Christian
Leadership Conference] for all of his life. He just sent me a manuscript that they put
together of interviews with people involved in the civil rights movement. It includes
an interview with Dana. Parts of it are very interesting. They asked me if I would
help them get it published. I was going to look at it this morning to see if there was
anything particularly useful to you.

As a result of the students going in, another group of students and faculty went over
and joined. The SCLC in St. Augustine was asking for people to come [and] for
white volunteers. They were hopeful that they might get attention. They were being
beaten into the ground, and they hoped that they could get some sort of response
from the national media and from the state government and the rest if there were
white people involved as well. So several people went over: Marshall Jones, Jim
Brown (Jenny Brown's dad), and several others. Because they went, then those of
us who were involved with them particularly became more focused on what was
going on. We were concerned. So Brian [McNab] and I decided that we would go
over. I think that is the way some things often happen. People back into
membership associations.

There was a good article written about this a number of years ago [by Silvan
Tompkins called "The Psychology of Commitment," published in The Antislavery
Vanguard, edited by Martin Duberman, in 1965]. [Tompkins is an] able, young
historian. He is at Rutgers now. [It was actually] a collection of articles [on] the
antislavery vanguard. He asked a social psychologist to write an essay about how
people join organizations or join movements, and the essence of the social
psychologist's conclusion is that it is not a case of your reading the paper and
saying: "By golly, I have to take a stand. I am going to go join." You have friends,
something happens, you get denounced as being a Communist, and you say, "Well,
if that is the way you are going to be about it.. ." People back into membership for
a variety of reasons rather than overtly joining for ideological reasons.

L: And that characterizes you?

C: That characterizes me.

L: Now, did the SCLC send any representatives to Gainesville to gain support?

-21 -

C: Not as far as I know.

L: I am curious about connections between [St. Augustine and the University of Florida
in Gainesville].

C: I do not think there was any SCLC activity here as such.

L: OK. How long were you in jail?

C: Just three days.

L: And they definitely were not deluxe accommodations, according to your speech.
How did the sheriff's office and the guards in the jail treat the demonstrators that
they had jailed?

C: Well, they treated the first group much more severely than they treated us. What
they did was to lock them in an outdoor compound, in the dog compound, out in the
intense sun for a number of days. Some of them were fairly dehydrated when they
got out. They just put us in jail. We had started [our demonstration] out in the
Monson Motor Lodge, which was the focal point, but as we started into the
restaurant we saw that there was a wedding reception going on, so we decided that
we were not going to disrupt that. We walked out from the Monson lodge and went
to the Woolworth [dime store] on the main square instead. We were arrested there,
Brian and myself and one of the SCLC people. Then we were kept in segregated
quarters in the jail.

L: How much bail did they charge you with?

C: I think it was going to be $300. That is when Jean came over with the money tucked
in her bra. The next group was preparing to go, and Jean was going to go in with
Felicity Trueblood. I think eventually they released us on our own recognizance.
The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] sent up a lawyer for us, Toby Simon.
The St. Johns County Bar Association attempted to get him disbarred for barratry.
He asked to have an open hearing, and they insisted the hearing be closed in order
to protect him, to protect his reputation. Eventually this was not brought to court,
and the cases against all of us were dismissed with the passage of the 1964 Civil
Rights Act. It took about a year before it was dismissed. We went over several
times for hearings.

L: Back to St. Augustine.

C: Yes. Then when I went off to Japan [in 1965] it was still possible that the case
would be called up, so I was concerned about that.

-22-

The only particularly disturbing thing was that J. B. Stoner was sitting on the front
steps of the jail. A person brought Coca-Cola in for the Coke machine, not for us.
We could see him open up the back of his car to lift out the Coke cases, and there
was a Klan robe and paraphernalia. The Klan had the run of the jail, and all of us
believed that J. B. Stoner had been responsible for the [1963] bombing of
Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church.

L: Was he ever charged?

C: No. He was eventually convicted for the bombing of another church and went to jail
for a period of time.

L: He is not still alive, is he?

C: Yes, he is still alive. Rabid racist. I was talking about him once with Willard Stone,
who is the very fine southern correspondent for the Miami Herald. He said that he
had talked to J. B. Stoner--I had not--and Stoner was talking to him, saying "nigger"
this and "nigger" that. Willard said: "How can you speak with me like that? You
know I disagree with everything that you are saying." He said that J. B. Stoner said,
"Well, you are a white man, ain't cha?"

L: Did you encounter either of the other two leaders, Connie Lynch or Hoss Manucy?

C: Not directly, no.

L: I understand also that you went to Washington [DC] in August of 1963 for the March
for Jobs and Freedom.

C: No.

L: You were not involved in that. OK.

C: Do you mean the march on Washington with Martin Luther King?

L: Yes.

C: As far as I know, the only person who went from here was Manning Dauer. He went
to that with his old friend C. Vann Woodward. They spent time together each
summer. Van Woodward had taught [social sciences and humanities] here briefly,
in the end of the 1930s. As far as I know, Manning was the only [local] person who
went up for that.

L: Turning back to the Gainesville Women for Equal Rights, when they came together
and began to be an active force for racial change in the community in 1964, how did

-23-

different sections of the community react to a [civil rights] group of middle-class
faculty wives?

C: I cannot tell you. You are just going to have to ask them. I am sure that they really
will be able to tell you. They will tell you to whom to speak. [You] will want to speak
to [my wife] Jean, of course, and to Shirley Conroy, who lives in St. Augustine and
works for the state. Talk with [her husband] Professor [Stephen] Conroy; talk to
Steve and find out when he is going over there. You can work through him to make
arrangements. She was transferred to Duval County or to that region, so they have
two residences. Of course, Beverly Jones was a real organizer, the real leader.
Find out from Jean where Carol Thomas is. I last saw Carol when she came down
for Judy Brown's memorial service. Carol is a committed one--probably a
Communist now. She is committed on the left. I do not think anyone else was.
They will tell you who among the African-American community you will want to talk
to because this was not just a white college professors' wives organization. A
person, of course, who you particularly ought to talk to is Rosa Williams.

L: I understand she works for Tacachale [state home for mentally retarded, located in
Gainesville]. I know she is still in town. You have mentioned Judith Brown a couple
of times. I understand that she and Beverly Jones became active feminists toward
the end of the decade. Can you elaborate on that, on the connection between civil
rights activism and emergent feminist consciousness?

C: I think there [you need to] talk to Beverly or to Carol Giardina. Do you know Carol?

L: I have met her once. Yes.

C: We are going to have lunch tomorrow. Carol is enrolled as a fellow student in
history at the University of Florida.

L: Oh, really.

C: Carol was the person who was closest to Judy, and she can talk to you about that.
They came together about the time that Judy was moving into feminism, so she can
tell you about Red Stockings and ...

L: . the feminist scene in Gainesville. Do you recall any presence of the federal
government in Gainesville: FBI, justice department, or anything like that [that was]
involved related to the civil rights activities?

C: No. They may have been, [but] I do not know. [They were] later on with the
Vietnam war, but not as far as I know with civil rights.

L: OK. Did Gainesville's civil rights activities get any national media attention?

-24-

C: I do not think so. The first organized demonstration that I can remember that sort of
led into--I cannot tell you how--the organization of the civil rights movement was a
[1961] protest demonstration against Spessard Holland for having voted against the
mental health bill. He was staying at the College Inn down on 13th Street, so there
was a picket against him, a picket out in front of the College Inn.

L: Do you remember anybody who was involved?

C: My son. We took him in his stroller. It was his first political activity. That probably
shaped the rest of his life thereafter.

L: It seems to me from the gist of our conversation that the civil rights movement as it
affected Gainesville was a fairly calm, fairly peaceful experience in comparison to
what was going on in other places.

C: Yes.

L: Why do you think that was so?

C: I cannot tell you. In part [it could have been] because the community did not take a
die-hard resistance stand. There was responsiveness within the community. But
that does not necessarily prevent the eruption of greater confrontation and perhaps
of violence. One thing that we know about the way in which events develop is that
once you open up the doors, once you give in, the little things often go much faster
and much further than you expect them to go. So any kind of weakening of the
forces of control or the forces of dominance or resistance can often spur on rather
than quiet a protest, particularly when it is deep-rooted.

Why things worked better in Gainesville I do not know. Perhaps in part [it was]
because some of the leadership of Gainesville was responsive because there were
organizations working for it, like the [Gainesville] Ministerial Association [and]
organizations on campus such as the Students [Group for Equal Rights]. The
Gainesville Women for Equal Rights [was another active off-campus group]. Some
of the city and county commissioners [were also active].

Oh, one person you really need to talk to in order to find out what the situation was
in Gainesville is Hal Lewis. Have you thought about him or contacted him?

L: Tell me about him.

C: He is professor emeritus of education. He is in foundations of education.

L: What was his involvement?

-25-

C: There was a civil rights advisory board for Florida founded in conjunction with ...
What was the name of the civil rights study that Harry Truman initiated? I have its
report somewhere over your left shoulder; I could find it. Anyway, what they did was
set up advisory boards in the various southern states, and Hal Lewis was a member
of that advisory board. This would be in the 1950s. Hal would probably be a
person, if he is thinking about it and is willing to talk about it, [who] could give you
more information than probably anybody else.

L: Is he here in town?

C: He is here in town. Yes.

L: In overall terms, what do you think made Gainesville's experience, other than the
relative peacefulness, distinctive or different from the national experience?

C: I do now know the answer to that, Stuart. It is hard to say what the national
experience actually was and compare it to other towns or communities. Obviously,
can you compare it so a large city--this is something I have not really thought about
before--such as Birmingham or Montgomery? No. This is a small community. You
could compare it, perhaps, against a college town as against a non-college town.
You assume there is much more openness within the college town, even though the
community of Gainesville was very parochial.

One of the important things that makes Gainesville different from other communities
is the medical school. The medical school opened the year after I came, so that
would be 1956. (See, I measure everything starting from myself. [That is a] terrible,
terrible way to go!) It made us much more cosmopolitan. [There was] much more
support for various activities in civil rights and elsewhere coming from the medical
school and medical community. I have always felt that Gainesville when I came was
a nice town if things were going well for you, and if your life was not working out well
there was no way to change it in Gainesville. What the medical school did was to
bring in diversity and make it much more of a national community. When I came
here the student body was 13,000 altogether. So this is a much more open and
tolerant community, partially because it was a university community and partially
because it was a growing community as well.

Civil rights in Gainesville has always been considered to be more open than in
Tallahassee, if you talk to people within the black community. We went up to
Lawton Chiles's inauguration and rode back with Gainesville's black city manager
Paul White and Rosa Williams and someone else, and I was talking about how
attractive I thought Tallahassee was. For everything I said good about Tallahassee,
they would say something bad about it, what a real red-neck town they thought it
was and that no one such as [county commissioner Rodney] Long could possibly
have gotten elected in Tallahassee. Politically Gainesville was much more open.

-26-

L: How would you characterize race relations in the 1970s in Gainesville?

C: I do not know how you characterize race relations as a category. There were not
basically the explosive race problems. There was the underlying problem that
Gainesville faces, which is that this is a terribly poor community, one of the poorest
communities in the whole United States. Alachua County is a poverty area. You are
going to find that particularly for youth there are no jobs; [there are no jobs] for
young black men in Gainesville. The kinds of jobs that unskilled people might do in
the service industry are often taken over by students.

I cannot tell you about race relations as such in the 1970s. I think [that during] the
1980s we both felt there was less contact. We tend to get together less with our
black friends, and the black community tends to withdraw. Find almost any kind of
activity that [is popular among whites, and you will find that they are the kinds of
things that] the members of the black community just do not go to, so the community
has in a way segregated itself. Ask that when you talk to Jean and the people who
are involved.

You are going to find that the Gainesville Women for Equal Rights was not just
involved in race relations as such but was also very much involved with poverty and
with the legislative poverty programs. A group of women went up [to Tallahassee]
from Gainesville and testified before the state legislature and helped draw up some
of the guidelines and some of the laws and worked with programs in the schools.
[There was] a whole series [of them].

L: Like kindergarten?

C: The Hands program, Best Day of the Week ... One of the people there I guess you
will have to talk to is Jean Beardsley. [My wife] Jean will give you the names of
people with whom to work. Basically, University people are the last people to know
about it. University professors, particularly political scientists and historians, are
disdainful of community activity. For a while in this anti-nepotistic world it was the
wives who went out and ran the community while the professors were much too
sophisticated to [get involved in any real way].

L: Can you think of anything that I have overlooked that would be important to add?

C: One thing. It is hard to evaluate it, but it is an experience that members of the
faculty have. We are a product, among other things, of our experiences, and it is
hard to tell how they actually shape our lives and our commitments and
involvements. In the end of the 1950s we had the Johns Committee come to
Gainesville. You know that story, I assume.

L: Well, I know about the Johns Committee.

-27-

C: [Florida] Senator Charley E. Johns of Starke was the leader of the "pork choppers,"
the rural northern Florida legislators that dominated the [Florida] Senate. A
committee was formed [in the late 1950s]--they had the money--to look for
Communists. They could not find them, so they looked for homosexuals and did
[find some]. So this faculty community was supine about this. The administration
aided the Johns Committee, which would roust people up and send them off to be
interrogated without counsel in a motel room at the [Hill Top] Manor Motel.

L: This was [J. Wayne] Reitz's administration.

C: It was during his presidency, Reitz and [Robert] Mautz. [The Johns Committee
report came out in 1963, when Mautz was vice-president for academic affairs. In
the 1950s, Mautz was assistant dean of the College of Law. Ed.] None of us really
knew very much of what was going on, but the faculty did nothing. [In] this kind of a
world, if you are accused of being a homosexual and were threatened with going to
jail, what you did then was go quietly. So we knew who among our friends had left
the faculty or were fired. I do not know that any of them went to jail. But there was
no point at which one would rally. [There was] no information. I think we were
generally intimidated. One never did anything like this, anyway. There was no form
of collective activity other than Paul [Hanna] having been unwise enough to put the
resolution to the AAUP [American Association of University Professors] that we
ought to integrate.

I think a lot of us decided, and felt very deeply, that we were at fault because we had
let something like this go on. I think that those who experienced it were convinced
without ever having taken the public stance, saying, "Therefore," that one had to
fight against any such oppressive activity. This is one of the legacies of the 1960s;
that is, one has to take a public stand and fight against the things that are wrong. I
think for some people the experience of the Johns Committee when we did nothing
[brought about changes in our thinking]. I do not think that we would let that go by
again. So I have no idea how you factor in the Johns Committee, but I think it had
an influence on many of the faculty. I am not sure how many, but some.

L: The Johns Committee sent an investigator to check out the Student Group for Equal
Rights, if I am not mistaken.

C: I do not know what [if anything] was ever filed.

L: Is there anything else that you would like to add to this?

C: Offhand, no. I really have not thought about this in preparation for your coming. I
have some things that you may already have, if you would like to take a look.

L: Anything that you have would be helpful.

-28-

C: I would like [them] back; I have no idea what I will do with them. This is the
University's testimony before the Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee of the
[Faculty] Senate on Marshall Jones. This will tell you not only something of what
was going on but the kind of surveillance the University maintained and the kind of
activity that the University considered to be objectionable and grounds for denial of
tenure. I think if you look at this and think about it, it will give you a sense of what
official attitudes were.

This is Marshall Jones's history of the student movement at the University of Florida,
which I will loan to you and ask you not to copy because he had asked me not to
copy it.

L: So "not to copy" means I cannot quote?

C: Take notes on it. If you want to quote, what you might do is get in touch with him;
when you get in touch with him, ask him.

This [document] is [about] the Southern Legal Action movement in Montreat. That is
very interesting. That was 1969, I guess, just after Richard Nixon became
president.

L: Does it speak to civil rights at all?

C: Civil rights, but not race. That is much later. [Here is a] statement of President
[Stephen C.] O'Connell about the Vietnam war.

L: I think I have that.

C: You have Ed Richer's open letter to Student Group for Equal Rights, 1964?

L: No. At least not yet.

C: At one time Frank Orser, who is a University librarian, started to do a paper--I guess
it was for me--on desegregation in Gainesville.

L: How far did he get?

C: I could phone him. He is in acquisitions. If you would like I will phone him and ask--
it was written in 1968--if you could read or use the paper.